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Point of Clarification—Honest Courage in the Service of Clarity

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
© F4f | Dreamstime.com

© F4f | Dreamstime.com

I had a colleague years ago named Sandra.  Sandra had a very special skill.  It’s one part honesty and three parts courage—and it made her an indispensible part of any meeting.

I remember one meeting where a consultant kept using a word that no one in the room knew.  Not that anyone admitted this, of course.  We all sat there like lumps, all assuming that we were the only ones who didn’t know the word, and all afraid to show it.

“You have to realize that the customer may be coming to your brochure with an entirely different hermeneutic framework.”

“It’s essential to take the hermeneutics of your ad campaign into account.”

What worried me most was that this word “hermeneutic” kept coming up alongside words like “essential” and “crucial.”  But did I raise a hand?  Not on your life.

“Excuse me,” Sandra said at last. “You keep using that word—’hermeneutic.’  I don’t know what that means.”

The reason I know for certain that no one else in the room knew the word either was the sudden, visible relaxation of all shoulders around the table, accompanied with a dozen little sighs of relief.  We were going to learn the meaning after all, thanks to Sandra’s honest courage.

The next time you find yourself in the same situation—not understanding something, and certain that all those around you do—know that the likelihood that others are also sitting in silent incomprehension is somewhere around (hmm, let me do the math here…carry the six…) somewhere around 100 percent.  And if everyone else DOES happen to know what’s going on, know that it is 100 percent permissible to reveal that you don’t know everything because NO ONE DOES.

So do everyone a favor.  Be like Sandra.  Be the one who is honest and courageous enough to ask for clarification.  You’ll be an asset to workplace communication and a hero to your colleagues.

Oh, and hermeneutics?  The consultant said it means “interpretation.”  Why he couldn’t just say “interpretation” in the first place is a topic for another day.

 

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The Terrible Trio—Vampires, Victims, and Whiners (oh my!)

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
© Rinderart | Dreamstime.com

© Rinderart | Dreamstime.com

Part 3:  The Whiner

Ah, whiners.  Instead of telling you what can be done, whiners spend hours vividly outlining what can’t be done and why. Had whiners ruled the world, we’d still be sitting in our caves, huddled around the fire complaining that we can’t find the remote control.

Whining is an attempt to “one-up” others by dismissing all possibilities before anyone has a chance to make a suggestion. Oddly enough, while a whiner’s statement may sound definite, the bluster is actually born of insecurity. Although they have enough mental sharpness to point out problems, they don’t have enough confidence to work at resolving them.  Many people who grow up to be whiners learned early on in life that they could get more attention and by voicing a complaint than by trying to correct a situation.

There isn’t much room for someone like that in a workplace where team members want to rock or in an office where everyone is willing to carry their weight and then some.

Of course, this is not to say that there will never be any whining again, ever. Sometimes it goes with the human condition.  And if we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we’ve ALL have had our moments of whining.

We all have our occasional pity parties or bouts of attention seeking. Despite our knowing how whining can negatively impact others and render us ineffective, there’s a remote chance we might once again choose to uncork that bottle of whine. We’re only human.

Although the ugly truth is that there’s nothing attractive about whining, there are ways to prevent and avoid the condition in ourselves AND in others.  The key is to name it, to make it public, to give ourselves and others permission to laugh it away.

Forge an agreement in your workplace to drive whining away once and for all by flashing the “W” sign—three fingers extended—whenever anyone starts to whine, moan, or groan.  It’s a humorous, non-threatening reminder to stop whining and start creating a solution.

Whenever someone gets the sign, they must agree to stop IMMEDIATELY.  The usual result is a good-natured laugh.  Make sure you distribute the sign evenly around the office—don’t gang up on a single person—and be sure to handle your own occasional dips into Whine Country with good humor and honesty.

 

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Getting it Done—Winning the Execution Game

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
Dusanzidar | Dreamstime.com

Dusanzidar | Dreamstime.com

Execution is everything.  Plan all you want, dream all you can, then turn that key or you’ve accomplished nothing.  Execution is what separates those who merely have lofty ideas from those who end up winning the game. It’s about taking strategies and making sure they are implemented with power.

Creating a culture of execution is a leadership issue. It combines creating a “no-excuses, get-it-done” culture with the systems, processes, and accountabilities that ensure things are done consistently and done well.

But it’s also more than a leadership issue.  People at every level in an organization can get bogged down in planning and strategizing without ever getting off the pot.

It’s easy to guess which things in a company are measured and audited:  It’s the things that people actually DO and do well.  If you want something done with fairly strong consistency, set measurable benchmarks.

But don’t forget to put systems in place to see if the benchmarks are being met.  If a standard is measured in the forest, and no on is there to audit it—does it make a difference?  Not bloody likely.  Why should it?

You can’t monitor and audit every facet of your business, or you won’t have time to run the business.  So where does execution matter most?  It matters most in the critical moments I call Moments of Truth—the moments where execution can mean the difference between success and failure.

Moments of Truth are those critical times when a customer forms an impression of you, deciding whether your offerings and their standards see eye-to-eye.  Though they vary from industry to industry and business to business, every business has them.  Define them, create measurable goals and a way to assess progress, and GO.

Use weekly planning meetings in which each attendee declares focused results following a clean process and you will create magic. These meetings create the engine to keep people focused on doing the right things and getting results in the areas that matter. It also reveals the “stealth slackers”—those who are otherwise masterful at hiding and looking busy.  Got some of those?

Top performers don’t just stay busy—they know how to get the RIGHT things accomplished. Top performing leaders also know how to get their people focused on doing the right things, especially those things intimately tied to the Moments of Truth that can make or break a company.  They know that accepting no excuses from their team members means permitting no excuses from themselves as well.

For an organization to thrive in these highly competitive times, it is more critical than ever for leaders to build an environment where their word is law. Only by conveying that attitude can they expect others to be held to the same standard.

Miracles are supposed to happen, but they require a steadfast, ironclad system of execution and a leader who is committed to making the miracle happen.  So be the miracle!

 

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Seven Secrets of a “Thank God It’s Monday” Workplace

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
© Vgstudio | Dreamstime.com

© Vgstudio | Dreamstime.com

What accounts for the difference between “Oh crap, it’s Monday” and “Thank God it’s Monday”?  It all boils down to seven habits that can change everything about the culture of your workplace:

1. Show up fully and commit with all your heart
At work, we think of home.  At home, we think of work.  Time to stop that.  The first step toward a TGIM workplace is being present and accounted for at work.  Thinking about being elsewhere leads to resenting where you are. 

While you are at work, commit to work with all your heart.  This is what I call throwing your heart over the bar—committing 100 percent to the moment and task before you.
 
2. Communicate clearly
Use powerful and positive language about what you will do and the attitude you expect from others.  If a TGIM workplace is your goal, take the time to make your communications clear on every level.

3. Go beyond the job description
Going beyond the job description happens when you pitch in and help others at work without expecting reward. Willingly share the load. If you’re caught up on your tasks, help someone else who is crunching for a deadline.  Instead of an extra burden, you actually feel more a part of things than ever.

4. Don’t tolerate dysfunctional behaviors
Establish a zero-tolerance policy for talking behind another person’s back, then give each other permission to address conflict head-on, out loud, courageously and honestly. Create a trusting and open environment and watch the dysfunction ebb away.

5. Clean up your messes
Relationships are built on trust. Without that foundation, there is no basis for a relationship.  We breach the trust each time we don’t do what we said we would do.  But here’s the thing—that breach can be healed quickly IF you come back and clean up the mess.  Acknowledge that the results are not okay, then make a commitment to put things right and prevent a recurrence.

6. Live a life of profound service
Once you place yourself in the service of those around you—your family, your colleagues, your customers—every moment becomes imbued with purpose and significance, and you feel GOOD. 
As you drive to work, begin thinking about how the work you do is serving others, contributing to their success and happiness.  This is the essence of true service, and the key to a workplace that draws you happily back, Monday after Monday after Monday.

7.  Celebrate
Every project consists of little steps, little victories along the way.  Recognize and celebrate them in ways large and small.  Build a system of celebrations and rewards—quarterly, weekly, daily—and follow through like your company’s life depends on it.  Because (psst) it does.

Acquire these seven habits and spread them through your workplace, then be sure to notice the first Monday your hand reaches for the alarm—and you smile.

 

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Getting Back that First-Day Feeling

Friday, January 15th, 2010
© Sodimages | Dreamstime.com

© Sodimages | Dreamstime.com

Remember your very first day on the job?  Your shoes had a shine like the tiles on the Space Shuttle and the crease in your slacks could have diced celery.  The air was somehow fresher, the birds chirpier.  You had been hired.  You’d been given a chance to excel, a chance to make a difference.

Now contrast that with this morning.

Most people who signed up for the Big Game end up making one compromise after another until they’ve resigned themselves to mediocrity.  It’s darned hard to keep that first-day buzz going. 

BUT…there’s no reason you can’t choose to recover a good measure of that first-day feeling, that striving for excellence, and put it to good use in the service of everyone whose lives you touch on a daily basis.

It’s all about making the choice to do it.

Have you ever met a two-year-old who wasn’t enthusiastic?  We come prepackaged with it.  And then…

What happens to us?

What happens is that we make a choice.  Some of us choose to make the effort to stay in touch with our inner enthusiasm.  Others find reasons to lose touch with it—boredom, responsibilities, challenges, fatigue.

But here’s the problem:  Enthusiasm is the lifeblood of all success.  Without it, nothing great happens.  If you choose to lose touch with your inner enthusiasm, you are choosing mediocrity.  It’s really that simple.

Sure, there are plenty of reasons to curb your enthusiasm.  But there are just as many reasons to find it again—to celebrate your incredible good fortune, and in the process, to make that fortune even better.

Start with the fact that you’re not dead yet, that you were born at all, that you have a job, and that compared to a lot of folks, you have a pretty darn good job.

Now take a close look at the circumstances of this good job you have.  Write down your five biggest complaints and spin them into positives.  For example, “My boss micromanages me” can be reframed as “My boss cares enough about me to step into my work when I need help.”
If you’ve truly committed to finding your first-day buzz again, you should be an awful lot closer to it now than you were ten minutes ago. 

All this rethinking and reframing has removed a HUGE energy drain from your life—one you were probably unaware of.  It takes massive amounts of energy to continually reinforce your own sense of victimhood.  Excellence is MUCH less expensive.  Now that you feel lucky instead, what on Earth are you going to do with all that energy?

How about playing the Big Game you signed up for?

What you’ve just filled yourself up with is a lion’s share of this precious thing called the human spirit, and the human spirit will not invest in mediocrity.  So play the meaningful, bighearted game you always dreamed of playing, and leave the mediocrity to others.

 

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Dealing with the Low Performer

Friday, December 4th, 2009
© Elenathewise | Dreamstime.com

© Elenathewise | Dreamstime.com

No doubt the phrase “low performer” brought someone bubbling up from your past.  Right?  Let’s call him Frank.  Maybe you were a youngster, learning the business, working your way up the best you could—and there was Frank, working as hard as he could to avoid working as hard as he could.

He knew all the shortcuts, Frank did.  He was the one pulling his coat on at 4:56 one day and 4:55 the next, putting in the absolute minimum effort required to get by, watching the clock and complaining endlessly about…well, everything.

What about the Franks hiding out in your organization today—low performers sucking the energy (I call these energy vampires) and profitability out of your company?

Not everyone can be a star, you might say.  True enough.  But did you know that low performers are the #1 cause of the downfall of unsuccessful CEOs, and that leaders who keep and coddle low performers are 13 times more likely to be fired than those who address the problem?

Low performers drain resources, create additional work for the high performers, and poison the culture.  Worst of all, they send the message that low performance is an acceptable path through your organization.

It isn’t.  If success is really important to you, it CAN’T be.  So let’s assume you agree.  How can you take the low performers by the horns?

1.  Confront the problem directly and immediately.  Don’t suggest, don’t imply, and don’t delay.  Once you have solid evidence of a habitual low performer, schedule an immediate meeting.

2.  Be specific and clear.  Tell the person (1) what you have observed, (2) that it is unacceptable, (3) what you expect in its place, and (4) what consequences will follow if corrections are not made.

3.  Make expectations crystal clear.  It’s easiest to hold someone to a standard that has been clearly spelled out, both verbally and in writing.

4.  Base your comments on measurable things.  Vague criticisms about “not pitching in” or “dragging your heels” are too easily deflected.  “You are expected to produce X leads per quarter and you produced less than half that amount for two quarters running”—hard to wiggle out of that one.

5.  Follow through.  If the person’s performance turns around, a word of appreciation can go a long way to keeping it on track.  But if there’s little or no improvement, you MUST follow through on the consequences you promised. 

Remember that there’s always an audience for these things—other low performers testing your resolve, and high performers silently cheering you on.  Consistency is crucial.  Ramp up the consequences for the next infraction, and follow through again.  You’ll not only correct the behavior of one person, but establish a “no excuses” culture that benefits everyone.

And when its time to terminate the low performer, make sure your ducks are in a row, then PULL THAT SWITCH.  It’s never easy, but knowing when to say ENOUGH is one of the marks of a genuine leader.

 

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Values As Your True North

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
 
© Dusanzidar | Dreamstime.com

© Dusanzidar | Dreamstime.com

I had an old friend who was a software programmer in San Jose.  At the time I knew him, he’d held several jobs in a few years. He told me he wasn’t happy in his newest job and wanted to find a new one.  Again.

“Are you moving toward a new job,” I asked, “or running away from your current mess?”

“Well,” he said, “if I’m honest with myself…I suppose I’m running away.”

“That’s too bad,” I said, “because there was obviously some lesson you missed while there, some mistakes you’ll probably repeat. I suggest you stay and learn the lesson so you can move toward something—otherwise, we’ll be having this exact same conversation in another year when you’re looking for your next job.”

Despite my sage advice, he left anyway, and started a new job…which he recently lost.

Same story, different day.

The trick here is to be honest with yourself. If you’re getting married, it’s easy to say you’re moving toward a relationship—but you might be moving away from being alone. That’s a very different reason to get married, and not a very good one. How many divorced and/or miserable people are out there raising their hands on this one?

You will find that almost EVERY bad decision follows from a violation of a value—a moving away from a fear instead of moving toward something you love.

So you’ve made some good decisions, and you’ve made a few lousy ones. Welcome to the human race. But what can you learn from your personal history to improve the ratio of good to lousy?

Let’s do an autopsy on the decisions you’ve made that have killed deals, killed relationships, reduced your success, and otherwise created general chaos in your life:

You needed to meet a goal or quota, so you did the wrong thing by the client. You thought the client and your boss wouldn’t notice. That didn’t work. You violated your value of always doing the right thing by the customer, and a bad result was your reward.

You had to get home early to meet with friends, so you didn’t double-check that project before sending it out to the client. You lost the deal because you didn’t uphold your value of quality work. Again, bummer result.

You were in a pinch to fill a position, so you hired someone you knew just didn’t share your values. Twenty-four hours after the start time, you know you have a problem.

In each of these cases, you made a decision that deep in your gut felt wrong before you even made it. That butterflies-swirling-like-a-flush-down-the-porcelain-bowl feeling is all that’s needed to know for certain that we blew it.

Let’s make this easy. Psychologists tell us that all emotions are rooted either in love or in fear. Anger, for example, is a symptom of fear. You can’t be angry if you’re not afraid. Joy is based in love. You can’t feel bliss without having love at the core. Fear is a “moving-away-from” emotion. Love is “moving-toward.”

Analyze the disastrous decisions you’ve made, and a pattern of “moving away” from something will generally emerge. 
• Moving away from missing a quota.
• Moving away from confronting a problem.
• Moving away from one company or boss as opposed to moving toward a bigger calling—thus, the saying, “Out of the frying pan, into the fire.”

So the next time you need to make a decision, ask yourself if you’re moving away from something or moving toward something.  Once you master that assessment, it’s amazing how much better your decisionmaking, and your results, will become.

 

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Woohoo! Thank God Its Monday Hit #1 Overall

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

Thank you to everyone for all the help of spreading the word about Thank God It’s Monday. It hit number 1 overall as of all books sold! It is experiencing the second week as the number one business book and it’s also sold out in the U.K. and made the best seller list in Canada as well.

Pinch me!!!

Again, thank you to everyone who have sent the massive amount of emails saying you’ve bought 10 plus copies for all your friends. Now THAT is a commitment to a healthy workplace.

Thank you for being a part of this movement.

Only a few days left until Monday!!!

Cheers,

Roxanne

 

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Great News…Thank God It’s Monday Just Hit Amazon’s #2 Overall

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

This is SUCH great news. My new book, Thank God It’s Monday, just hit #2 overall of all books on Amazon a few minutes ago and has been the #1 selling business book for two weeks in a row!

It also hit The Wall Street Journal list last week.

Why?

I think it’s because people are tired of not loving their work. With all the layoffs, those who are “left behind” with twice the work and half the friends are so disheartened and don’t know how to get their rhythm back.

Here’s a few tips on getting that “new job” feeling back… (more…)

 

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Being happy – for goodness’ sake

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

Credit: © Frenta | Dreamstime.com

Credit: © Frenta | Dreamstime.com

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy; I mean that if you are happy you will be good. —Bertrand Russell

If it seems weird for a column about making work more fun and engaging to open with a quote from the philosopher Bertrand Russell—then honey, you don’t know Bert.

Some philosophers spend their time working out obscure problems that don’t seem to have much to do with you and me. But Bertrand Russell spent a lot of his time thinking about everyday things—like happiness, and what it means to be good. (more…)

 

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